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JetBlue Guy Breaks Silence on August Outburst

Steven Slater accepts responsibility, telling "Larry King Live" Tuesday, "It was a perfect storm of bad manners that created the situation, including my own."

JetBlue Guy Steven Slater broke his silence on Larry King Live Tuesday night about the August outburst that resulted in him jumping out of a plane on an evacuation slide.

"There were two customers [a man and woman] who were jockeying for position in the overhead compartments and I could see that the bag in question was far larger than anything that should have been on the aircraft," Slater told King. "I went back to assist in getting the item properly stowed... [the woman] was pushing and pulling the bag, and it just kind of happened in the midst of this I got smacked across the forehead."

Slater says that he received a cut from the blow. What follows, according to reports, is Slater got on the plane's address system, used profanities to say he was done with the business, grabbed two beers from the beverage cart and exited out the emergency inflatable slide. Slater was arrested a few hours later at his home in Belle Harbor, NY, and pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor criminal mischief earlier this month. A judge ordered him to check into a mental health program and pay the airline $10,000 to fix the slide.

"I was frustrated," Slater said. "It was a perfect storm of bad manners that created the situation, including my own."
"Flight attendants are working 12-14 hour duty days, often with as little as 6-8 hours of rest the night before," Slater went on. "It was the third leg of the day, it was the third day of a three day trip, it all just kind of came to a head."

Slater is working on a book tentatively titled "Cabin Pressure," which will cover his 20 years in the travel business. His agent is through William Morris.

He's also been in talks for a reality show. Earlier this month, his publicist, Howard Bragman, told The Hollywood Reporter, "We got through the legal challenges and now we’re focusing on what comes next. We’re open to an interesting discussion about projects and ideas."